What Was Built to Be a Ship of Dreams?: The Titanic: A Who HQ Graphic Novel

Who HQ Graphic Novel Series

by Emmett Nahil, Who HQ, Shazleen Khan (illustrator)

Genres: Graphic Novels, Middle Grade, Historical Fiction

Kindle Edition

Published July 15, 2025

About the author

Hailing from a haunted seaside town in Northeastern Massachusetts, Emmett Nahil is the author of novel FROM THE BELLY (Tenebrous Press, 2024) and graphic novel LET ME OUT (Oni Press, 2023). His obsession with horror and speculative fiction has taken his writing to Nightmare Magazine, THE BOOK OF QUEER SAINTS: VOLUME II, Laura Kate Dale's GENDER EUPHORIA anthology, and elsewhere. In his other life, Emmett is the Narrative Director and co-founder of Perfect Garbage Studios. He can be found most places online as @_emnays.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the illustrations, but this was a very rudimentary Titanic book.

[Deke Moulton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very, very quick and short read, with a very, very, very close lens highlighting three families on the Titanic. One oddly enough is the unsinkable Molly Brown, one is a French family with the father being the only Black person who was on the Titanic (something I learned from reading the forward!) and the last being a family from Syria, which I stopped in googled how many Arabs were on the Titanic and was surprised to learn there was an estimate estimated 130! (information, oddly enough, missing from the forward)

For its very limited scope, I think it did the best job it could in trying to show the differences between first and third class passengers (although much of these differences were explained in the frequent notes, I think more could’ve been done to visually demonstrate these differences) - I am also awkwardly satisfied that at least one character from the narrative doesn’t make it (compared to the book iceberg in which every single character survives, which to me feels like an insult to all of the people who died).

Always really interesting to see just how incredibly diverse the passengers of the Titanic were! Also huge kudos to the illustrator who also wrote a Asterix English when it’s switched to an English speaking character instead of always having non-English language (in this case French and Arabic) as oddities.

[Annamarie Carlson (she, her)]

That title is a mouthful, but this is the most successful who-hq-graphic-novel that I've read. It's a very simplistic overview of the Titanic, but it works a bit better since it reads like an I Survived book. (It isn't as strong as those, but this will have more appeal to kids due to that pacing and struture.) Don't expect to come away with more than the basic knowledge that there were three classes of passengers, the ship hit an iceberg, and some people were saved.

[blueygurl2016 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved seeing a side of the Titanic through this short biography of families from each of the classes but they unfortunately got a few of the details of Ismay wrong. They make him out to be a selfish man, but I was reading another book that said he really actually helped people get on the lifeboats and only got on because there was nobody else. And the random big long texts they threw in did kinda break up the graphic novel aspect.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first Who HQ graphic novel. To be perfectly honest, I prefer the "regular" books to This format. I feel they do a better job telling the stories than the graphic novels. The "I Survived" series of graphic novels also do a better job with the storytelling. The stories in this book seem to end abruptly and seem abbreviated more than necessary. While it was entertaining, I expected the same experience as I get with the other Who HQ books.

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seems to be factual, though I'm no expert. I think this is a successful and appropriate way for anyone, not just kids, to get started learning about the Titanic. Certainly not exhaustive, but it's approachable and enjoyable. I read it in about 25 minutes

[Helene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ship of Dreams
2025
Donna Jones Alward

[China · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shows some of the stories of Titanic passengers